Popping in my home address and my workplace got me a very similar route to what I normally take: Hm, I thought as I scanned it, I don't normally take Pleasant Park, but that would keep me off the intersection at Riverside and Industrial... I may have to give it a try. Although, there is a bike lane all the way down Alta Vista, and not, as far as I know, down Pleasant Park. I also don't know what the proportion of stop signs is like on Pleasant Park, something else that may not have been factored in to the routing software (and really, it would be hard to do that. Although, if they can come up with an algorithm to figure out the most boring day in history, you'd think they could come up with a way to factor bike lanes and four-way stops into the route plotter...)
The site will, eventually, have different coloured routes for bike-only trails, but for now they look just like all the other streets. Except, notably, that they don't have names. Which works awkwardly in the directions text (note steps 4 and 5):
| 3. Turn right at Alta Vista Dr | ||
1.6 km | ||
| 4. Turn left at Pleasant Park Rd | ||
950 m | ||
| 5. Turn right | ||
3.3 km | ||
| 6. Turn left | ||
400 m | ||
| 7. Slight left toward Montreal Rd/ | ||
1.8 km | ||
| 8. Turn right at Montreal Rd/ |
You also don't get Google Street View to help you out at these intersections. Ah well, this will probably improve. Fire back your input, cyclists: let Google's programmers know what you need!
Another note: year-round cyclists are going to have to remember that Google Maps will be marking routes as viable even if they're not cleared of snow and ice. This route sends you down the bike trail alongside the river, which has had a marvellously slippery, inch-thick coating of ice since the freezing rain last week. I'm still riding it, precariously: but come snowfall this won't be a possibility. I'm willing to bet Google Maps will still list it as a route, though. You can't expect them to have programmed for weather.
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